A German folksong performed upon my vintage 1938 Hohner Regina VI accordion, a 4/5 reed instrument in LMMM configuration. The sheet music is published by Edition Melodie in a songbook entitled "Das Grosse Akkordeon-Buch - Volume Three" (Le Grand Album pour l'Accordeon), Anton Peterer Music & Books, Zurich, Switzerland. All of the songs in this collection have been arranged by Herwig Peychaer.
This 1930's vintage Hohner accordion features some very distinctive treble sounds and possesses quite a powerful bass section, even though it is a relatively small instrument with a petite 16 inch keyboard. Internally the accordion displays a very strong wooden frame with good workmanship on the reed-blocks and those remarkable German reeds. My friend Jerry tuned the instrument, provided new wax and leathers, and adjusted the bass mechanism as well as the treble keyboard. Without Jerry's help this instrument would not have been playable. European folk-songs often sound so completely at home on a good vintage accordion such as this one. The external appearance of this instrument is still in remarkably fine condition, featuring a beautiful ivory/cream color, ornate black lettering and decorative details, exhibiting an extraordinary mother-of-pearl keyboard and suffering almost no scratches or missing pieces of exterior trim. The grill section above the keyboard is embedded with sparkling accents of various exotic hues and features superlative carving of the materials used in manufacture at that time. In many respects I prefer the sound of the 1930's accordions to the more modern instruments which came later. One professional accordionist once described such vintage instruments as sounding more like a large harmonica than a typical accordion. That's true, for the timbres sound so alive and thrilling that one might temporarily believe the musician is indeed playing...."a glorified harmonica!"
This 1930's vintage Hohner accordion features some very distinctive treble sounds and possesses quite a powerful bass section, even though it is a relatively small instrument with a petite 16 inch keyboard. Internally the accordion displays a very strong wooden frame with good workmanship on the reed-blocks and those remarkable German reeds. My friend Jerry tuned the instrument, provided new wax and leathers, and adjusted the bass mechanism as well as the treble keyboard. Without Jerry's help this instrument would not have been playable. European folk-songs often sound so completely at home on a good vintage accordion such as this one. The external appearance of this instrument is still in remarkably fine condition, featuring a beautiful ivory/cream color, ornate black lettering and decorative details, exhibiting an extraordinary mother-of-pearl keyboard and suffering almost no scratches or missing pieces of exterior trim. The grill section above the keyboard is embedded with sparkling accents of various exotic hues and features superlative carving of the materials used in manufacture at that time. In many respects I prefer the sound of the 1930's accordions to the more modern instruments which came later. One professional accordionist once described such vintage instruments as sounding more like a large harmonica than a typical accordion. That's true, for the timbres sound so alive and thrilling that one might temporarily believe the musician is indeed playing...."a glorified harmonica!"
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